emilai333

I bought two male guppies for my 5g tank and moved my guppy girls into the community 10g, which has lost several tetras (one to dropsy, three due to having been dyed - duh me why was I dumb enough to buy dyed fish?). After they were quarantined, I moved them around for the moment so that I have one girl with each male. I plan to breed them, put the boys in a different 5g, allow the girls to give birth in the original 5gal, move the girls back to the community tank, grow the babies until they are old enough to split between the 5g tanks, the 10g tanks, and giving to either a fish store or a teacher who keeps guppies in his pond. So, on to my question: how long should I leave the girls with the boys? a day? a week? a month?

Stradius011

You can leave them with the boys until they are noticably pregnant.

emilai333

Thank you for your reply... I'm not really sure I will be able to tell when they are pregnant but I'll give them a couple of weeks at least unless the females seem stressed.

I bought a big 30g or so plastic storage tub today that I am thinking of using as a guppy fry grow-out tank (Instead of dividing them amongst a bunch of 5g's). I will put in a filter and water from cycled tanks and cycle them for a couple of weeks on top of that, and a couple of plastic plants, but I plan to leave the bottom mostly bare so that I can see the fry. Females will be separated from fry by netting. Will this work? Am I forgetting anything?

Stradius011

It sounds great! My guppy fry growout tanks are only 10 gallon aquariums, I'm sure you're guppy frys will enjoy the space. Make sure to add a heater for faster and better growth.

Butterfly

Actually you need two females with each male to keep the male from harrassing the female too much. If they are left together a week that would be long enough. They should start having fry in about 29-30 days, so you could leave them three weeks you can still remove them before fry are due. This will give you plenty of time to set up and cycle fry facilities. I have one of the 30 plastic rubbermaid tubs I use for grow out for my bristlenose and it works great. All it needs is a sponge filter, and a heater and to be bare bottom. The bare bottom allows for ease of cleaning and water changing.
Carol

emilai333

Do you usually see a lot of courting behaviour from males when they are placed with females after seperation? Of the three males who are with females at the moment, only the smallest is frantically courting (I added him to the female's tank just today, they're both QT fish but came from the same place). The others are all just hanging out,and have been since introduction, anytime I look at them.

Is the two females to one male ratio true even when they are together for only a short period of about a week, under supervision, and the females appear unharassed? (The female with the male who is very enthusiastic about courting will be exposed for only a couple of days at most, and as previously mentioned, the others aren't so aggressive)
Most of the time, I keep my females in the community tank and my males in species only tanks.

raptors_4

I don't know if I would use a plastic tub for fish because some plastics can leak out toxins that would kill fish. It happened to a friend when he brought his goldfish out of his pond for winter and put it into a kiddie pool thing. And goldfish are probably more tolerant of impurities than guppy fry. Just something to watch out for.

Stradius011

That is if the male is sterile.